The Legislature's budget-writing committee slipped controversial language back into the state budget late Wednesday that would require the University of Wisconsin System to monitor the teaching workload of every professor and adjunct instructor on campuses.

It also would require a new UW Board of Regents policy to reward those who teach more than a standard academic load.

Lawmakers had previously pulled the provision, originally proposed by Gov. Scott Walker, because it is nonfiscal policy.

While faculty and administrators from several campuses have expressed concerns about the Legislature dictating university policy that by law is the responsibility of the regents, UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee have especially pointed concerns because they are the state's designated research institutions.

UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank has argued the teaching workload provisions do not take into account the broader mission of faculty and instructional staff.

“UW-Madison faculty provide service to Wisconsin in three critical areas — teaching, research, and outreach,” the chancellor said in a statement. “Each of these services is important so any method of tracking faculty workload should include all three areas, not merely time spent in the classroom.”

Walker wants the regents to create a policy no later than Jan. 1 to report to the UW System the teaching hours of every faculty member and adjunct instructor and to reward those who teach the most.

The governor also wants reporting of aggregate teaching hour data on the UW System's accountability dashboard so parents, students and anyone else interested can know how much time faculty at each campus spend in the classroom.

Several faculty members told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel they didn't know there was a faculty workload problem for lawmakers to solve and suggested there could be unintended consequences of the provisions.

"When you create incentives to reward the overloading of teachers, you’re going to get more overloaded teachers — and more burnout and lower quality instruction," said David Vanness, a UW-Madison professor of population health sciences.

"You’re also going to disincentivize research," he said. "Is this really a smart idea when UW-Madison has fallen out of the top rankings for research funding and is struggling to recruit and retain the most productive researchers?"

UW-Milwaukee associate professor of linguistics Nick Fleisher noted UW System campuses and the various schools and colleges within them have different profiles and missions.

"Requiring the Board of Regents to establish a single teaching load policy for the entire system is counterproductive micromanagement and it will lead to a bad
policy outcome," Fleisher said. "The stated goal of rewarding additional teaching is something that campuses already do in the form of overload pay."

UW-Milwaukee history professor Rachel Ida Buff said she teaches a full load, despite being eligible for teaching reductions because of administrative work.

She suggested it would be "false transparency" that amounts to surveillance.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) has repeatedly said he's concerned about the amount of time faculty spend outside the classroom.

“If they’re bringing in research, I totally understand that; they’re helping to grow the economy or even grow the public good," Vos told The Racine Journal Times in 2014. "But if they are just being allowed course releases to have a sabbatical or to do something that’s not productive, we don’t have the money to do that.”

University critics argue the primary function of faculty members is to teach in a classroom and everything else is ancillary. To many in academia, the primary function is to share knowledge, but in ways that go far beyond the classroom — competing for grants and running laboratories that employ and educate students, and making sure students are exposed to cutting-edge knowledge in their field.

Walker was pointed in his criticism of faculty during state budget discussions two years ago when he told former WTMJ-AM (620) radio host Charlie Sykes: "Maybe it's time for faculty and staff to start thinking about teaching more classes and doing more work."